Sunday, April 26, 2009

and days go by ..

It’s been quite a while since I wrote here, and no the culprit has not been my high flying career with one of the leading software firms in the industry. I have none. I have an obscure corner in an obscurer bay of my company building…the ITP bay commonly known as THE BENCH. Which means while people in projects slog under deadlines, do overtime, miss their own weddings…we put up our feet (literally), lower the (imaginary) brim of our hats and doze off with earplugs streaming the songs we have been listening to for the last 8 months into our ears.When sleep eludes us we turn to some unread book or unopened ebook.

We sign into chat but are soon found making excuses ranging from an urgent meeting with an absent supervisor to a desperate call of nature in order to go offline, simply because we don’t want to answer the proverbial question—“Whatsup??”

Some of us might be found engrossed in their own world of equations and synonyms, trying to plough their way into a B-school.

And when nothing is left we search obscure topics on wikipedia, like, psychoanalysis, pagan rituals, or in an act of utter desperation, the six wives of Henry VIII.

We recently joined our out of practice hands and rusted heads in a “SAY NO TO PLASTIC” campaign which had us painting posters, even a first grader would be ashamed to call his own and writing slogans that wouldn’t inspire a duckling…It also had me laughing like I haven’t in a long long time, and had me making friends and chatting up with people like I no longer deemed possible in office.

The campaign got over yesterday, the plastic bags are back and the posters have been lost somewhere in the labyrinths of the office…but here I am sitting on a desk, sharing a bag of peanuts and a diet coke with my new found friends along with childhood stories and poems… painting ridiculous paintings and trying to make sense out of dumplings of paint… holding discussions on who is the worst painter in the bay and on our views on paganism and Christianity and on long lost tales…

I am sitting here, with a smile on my lips, the proud owner of a shirt marred by dashes of paint and a heart of many shades (which I painted) taped to the wall of my cubicle alongside a brand new poem which came out of nowhere just like my new-found joy.

I want to live in a house by the seaWith whose white spray my spirit could flee

Or may be I would prefer a house on a giant treeWith whose red blossoms my heart could grow free

A castle in the wilderness it might as well beIn whose hidden passages my lost spirit I could see

Or may be my destiny is a quite plantation of teaIn whose green bosom could be the answer to my unheard plea…

but am not laughing at your situation. it happens. have you learnt swimming/salsa/mirenge/rumbha/painting on canvas/inter corporate meets.. if not you can do that. cant suggest,how can you kill time in office but lots of things are there after office hours which people forget as they age.